Tag Archives | single-payer

Vermont Gov. Pete Shumlin “treats healthcare as a right and not a privilege.” Well done Vermont, well done. Healthcare Finance News reports:

In what he described as “both an opportunity and an obligation,” Vermont Gov. Pete Shumlin has signed the country’s first single-payer law, setting the state on a course to be first with a publicly financed healthcare system.

Shumlin, who campaigned for governor on promises to pursue a single-payer system for the state, took little more than four months since his January inauguration to set the state on that course.

“We gather here today to launch the first single payer system in America, to do in Vermont what has taken too long – to have a healthcare (system) that is the best in the world that treats healthcare as a right and not a privilege, where healthcare follows the individual not the employer,” he said at the bill signing, held May 26 in the state’s capital of Montpelier.